Art has a home at 76 Bellevue Avenue: the Newport Art Museum. Founded in 1912 as the Art Association of Newport, it grew from the art colony and Impressionist movements and remained connected to the New York art scene, making it one of the oldest continuously operating art associations in the United States. The museum operates a gallery in the John N. A. Griswold House, a National Historic Landmark and one of the first American Stick Style buildings.
That house was designed by Richard Morris Hunt in 1864 and was one of his first commissions in Newport; the museum purchased the house in 1915. The museum expanded with a second gallery built in 1919 designed by Delano & Aldrich, and later, dedicated to the memory of the artist Howard Gardiner Cushing, added the Sarah Rives lobby and Morris Gallery in 1990. The museum also runs a school, the Coleman Center for Creative Studies at 26 Liberty Street.
Layers of art history and architecture meet on this avenue, from the Griswold House's Stick Style presence to the buildings along Bellevue Avenue that frame this long-running cultural institution.